1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a device for skimming debris from the surface of a body of water, and particularly to a skimmer for swimming and similar pools of water for keeping the surface of the pool free from leaves, twigs, branches, grass, and various other types of debris before the debris has time to settle to the bottom of the pool and making the pool even more difficult to keep clean.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many bodies of water such as swimming pools require various kinds of debris to be removed from the surface of water in the pool. One known manner of facilitating removal of this debris is to employ a floating device in conjunction with the currents set up by the conventional filtering devices generally provided with swimming pools. These floating devices divert the debris in such a manner as to carry it to the drain of the filtering device. Further, powered devices which employ a rotating screen arrangement have been proposed, and it is also known to use separate pumping arrangements that draws the debris from the pool together with a substantial quantity of water. The latter approaches, however, are rather complex and accordingly rather difficult to use and somewhat costly.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,767,055, issued Oct. 23, 1973 to L. P. Flatland, discloses a skimmer for a water body which floats about the water under power by the action of a propeller driven by a battery energized electric motor. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 3,625,364, issued Dec. 7, 1971 to C. H. LaChance, discloses a skimming device including a screen removably attached to the edge of a swimming pool so as to extend radially into the pool and collect debris brought into the screen by the currents caused by a circulating device associated with the pool. It is also known to manually remove debris from a swimming pool, and the like, by the use of a hand-held raking apparatus as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,237, issued Jan. 28, 1975 to N. N. Doerr.